Historical dam failures, near-misses, and the human side of dam safety.
A monthly column by Jordan Keeney with Dave Bennett, Co-Founders of DamSafety.IO. Told through the lens of decision-making and human nature, because the engineering is rarely what fails first.
Teton Dam Wasn't a Geotechnical Failure
Institutional confidence is the failure mode that builds dams the engineers said not to build.
St. Francis Dam: When One Man Is the Whole Review Process
Mulholland was brilliant. The system around him had no one whose job it was to disagree.
We Will Not Quit
A series of natural stopping points. None of them involve a decision to make the dam less safe. All of them have the same effect.
Banqiao: The Largest Dam Failure In History Started With A Memo
Chen Xing was not wrong. He was inconvenient. The arithmetic is never difficult, the hard part is the room.
Malpasset: The Best Engineer In Europe Was Wrong, And Nobody Could Tell Him
Track-record bias is the failure mode that catches the very best engineers, not the worst.
Vajont: The Dam Held. Two Thousand People Died Anyway.
An organization that ignores its own engineers does not need a dam to fail in order to kill people.
No. 7 · Oroville Dam, 2017.
New from Jordan Keeney, Sunday, November 15.
About DamNews
DamNews is the editorial publication of DamSafety.IO. The monthly column is written by Jordan Keeney, co-founder of DamSafety.IO, with Dave Bennett, co-founder of ECO:LOGIC Engineering and former Stantec US West Water lead.
Every piece takes a historical dam failure or near-miss and asks the question the engineering profession is least comfortable with: what did the humans in the room decide, and why? Because the engineering is rarely what fails first.